In fall 2011, Toronto-based filmmaker James Cooper was faced with an obstacle that many of his peers will find familiar: how to fund his new short film. Weighing the options with the film’s producer, they decided to try their luck at launching a Kickstarter campaign.

45 days and $21,000 later, the film, Elijah the Prophet, was successfully funded. Drawing from his experiences in the trenches as well as the thorough research he did prior to (and after) launching his own campaign, James wrote the ebook Kickstarter for Filmmakersto aid his fellow filmmakers in preparing and executing their own crowd funding campaigns. The book is a combination of personal experience, advice, facts and a case study on how the campaign for Elijah the Prophet was planned and executed.

“After the campaign was a success, I found myself answering a lot of questions from friends and friends of friends about how we did it. After a while, I realized that there’s no real catch-all source of information to break down the basics for people, so I set out to make one myself.”

However, he didn’t want price to get in the way of people taking a chance on the guide. It’s cheaply available for $1.99 on the Kindle, Nook and iBooks stores (with Kobo and more on their way). You can also buy it direct from the book’s website on a pay-what-you-want basis in DRM-free PDF.

“Making it available to as many people as possible was really important. Not everyone has an e-reader, so the PDF is a solution anyone can use” says the author.